Epidemiology
How to Judge COVID Risks and When to Wear a Mask
Scientific American asks experts in medicine, risk assessment and other fields how to balance the risks of COVID with the benefits of visiting public indoor spaces
Features159118 articles archived since 1845
Mental Health
The Pandemic Generation
Child development researchers are investigating whether the pandemic is shaping early brain development and behavior
Space Exploration
SpaceX’s Starship and NASA’s SLS Could Supercharge Space Science
Scientists are beginning to dream of how a new generation of super-heavy-lift rockets might enable revolutionary space telescopes and bigger, bolder interplanetary missions
Archaeology
Jerusalem Archaeology Modernizes but Runs into Ancient Problems
A new generation of scholars working in the Holy Land remain haunted by scripture and riven by modern politics
Neuroscience
The Father of Modern Neuroscience Discovered the Basic Unit of the Nervous System
Modern brain science as we know it began with the work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose creative thought sprang from memories of a childhood spent in the preindustrial Spanish countryside...
Astrophysics
Are Telescopes the Only Way to Find Dark Matter?
If the invisible matter does not appear in experiments or particle colliders, we may have to find it in space
Creativity
Spark Creativity with Thomas Edison’s Napping Technique
Waking yourself from the twilight state just before sleep may help you to solve a challenging problem, a study shows
Conservation
To Revive a River, Restore Its Liver
Radical reconstruction in Seattle is bringing nearly dead urban streams back to productive life
Public Health
COVID Revealed the Fragility of American Public Health
What happens when a deadly virus hits a vulnerable society
Computing
‘Momentum Computing’ Pushes Technology’s Thermodynamic Limits
Overheating is a major problem for today’s computers, but those of tomorrow might stay cool by circumventing a canonical boundary on information processing
Space Exploration
COVID Disrupted Everything—Even Rocket Launches
Surprising supply chain breakdowns
Inequality
The Pandemic Deepened Fault Lines in American Society
COVID energized the Black Lives Matter movement—and provoked a dangerous backlash
Policy
COVID Pushed Global Health Institutions to Their Limits
The need to reinvent the World Health Organization has become abundantly clear
Diversity
Women Are Creating a New Culture for Astronomy
A new generation of scientists are challenging the biased, hierarchical status quo
Public Health
COVID Is Here to Stay
How do we live with it?
Behavior
A High-Speed Scientific Hive Mind Emerged from the COVID Pandemic
The pandemic pushed researchers into new forms of rapid communication and collaboration
Politics
How the Pandemic Remade Science Journalism
It’s no longer possible to separate science and politics
Policy
COVID Changed the World of Work Forever
People realized their jobs don’t have to be that way
Mathematics
The Evolving Quest for a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics
More than 50 years after the seeds of a vast collection of mathematical ideas called the Langlands program began to sprout, surprising new findings are emerging
Public Health
What Humanity Should Eat to Stay Healthy and Save the Planet
What we eat needs to be nutritious and sustainable. Researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world
